We are studying epithelial morphogenesis in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegant. MH27 is an antibody that labels all adherers junctions in C elegans. Confocal microscopy will be used to examine MH27 staining of embryos from embryonic and larvae lethal mutant strains of C elegans. This will allow three dimensional reconstructions to be obtained that will determine the organization of epithelial cells in these mutants. In addition, Celegans strains carrying green fluorescent protein (gfp) reporter constructs and gfp-tagged proteins will be examined using confocal and 2-photon microscopy. This will enable us to determine the spatial and temporal distribution of gene products that have been demonstrated to be necessary for morphogenesis by genetic analysis. This project is new. Therefore, it currently has 0% BRTP.